


Last Hope

by SomeRainMustFall



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Choking, Episode: s02e03 Alma Mater, Gen, it's Malcolm not breathing for the 523423th time babes!!!, suffocation, this is THE fastest episode fix it I have ever written, ya'll know what the fuck it is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-27
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-12 21:00:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29017017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SomeRainMustFall/pseuds/SomeRainMustFall
Summary: He reaches up, pressing his shaking hand to his chest and grimacing.Something iswrong. “Bright?”Malcolm doesn’t answer. There’s panic in his eyes when they meet Gil’s, and, with another look at the room he’s in, Gil realizes hecan’tanswer.He can’tbreathe.
Relationships: Gil Arroyo & Malcolm Bright
Comments: 48
Kudos: 201





	Last Hope

**Author's Note:**

> >:( _Betwayal...why have the writers forsaken me..._

It’s _not_ just a fire alarm. 

Something in Gil tells him that, an instinct or a fear—makes him push past the scene as they take the girl into custody and into the building before him.

Nothing is on fire, and that confuses him. There’s no smoke anywhere but inside the small office in the middle—

With _his boy_ amidst it, hunched over, trying to burn his way through the door with a tacking iron. 

“Bright!” he shouts, and Malcolm jerks, startled as Gil comes up to the glass. Gil yanks on the handle, slams his hand against the keypad, and Malcolm presses the iron forward harder until he accidentally cracks the tool right in half, stomping his foot in frustration as it all falls to the floor.

And then he reaches up, pressing his shaking hand to his chest and grimacing.

Something is _wrong._ “ _Bright?_ ”

Malcolm doesn’t answer. There’s panic in his eyes when they meet Gil’s, and, with another look at the room he’s in, Gil realizes he _can’t_ answer.

He can’t _breathe_.

“Oh God—” he wheezes, as if suddenly neither can he, and then he turns to shout at the others to get whatever tools they need to get in, _now._

“What did you _do?”_ he hisses at Malcolm, slamming his hand against the glass, and Malcolm offers him a tiny smile that twists into something agonized as he gags, reaching up to put his hand opposite Gil’s, fingers splayed out.

Not a goodbye. It _cannot be_ a goodbye.

But Malcolm doesn’t stay there more than a second. He moves, pointing at Delaney in the corner, slumped unconscious or dead, and Gil _flinches_ as the sudden thought of Malcolm in the same position flickers through his head.

“The code—what’s the code? Malcolm, find the code!”

Malcolm’s eyes are wide, his lips pressed tight together as a violent shudder racks him, and then he starts obediently scrambling about the office, knocking things off the desk, going through the papers there. It has to be written down, right? _Right?_ It has to be, Malcolm _has_ to be able to find it. Gil does what he can, tries any combination he can think of—the year the school was established, a few guesses of the year the headmaster was born—and each and every single time it just clicks _red._

Malcolm slams his fist down against the desk, holds the back of his other hand to his mouth and stomps his foot again before he starts moving even more frantically, hair hanging into his face, sweat dripping down from it. 

There’s not enough time. Malcolm will be dead long before anyone who can get it figured out comes to their aid. 

He’s dying, he’s _dying—_

“The girl—” Gil gasps, “Bring the girl! Bring her back!”

Malcolm drops to his knees, gripping onto the desk with white knuckles. Gil punches the glass, takes his gun out and fires one shot, then another, swearing when the glass clouds but doesn’t break. Malcolm clutches at his throat with both hands, his chest heaving, and Gil’s vision is blurring with tears of _terror_ as he can do nothing but _watch._

“Bright! Hey, I’m right here! Okay? Just hang on—”

Malcolm lurches forward, grabbing Delaney’s shoulders tightly, shaking him. Maybe trying to get the code out of him, but Delaney doesn’t respond, doesn’t move at all, and suddenly Malcolm’s swaying, the deprivation starting to overwhelm him no matter how hard he's still trying to fight it off, and as he looks back at Gil with half-lidded, bleary eyes, he shakes his head.

“Please,” Gil finds himself saying, although he doesn’t know to who, to _what._ To Malcolm, to _God,_ to anyone that can stop this from happening—

“Lieutenant!”

Gil whirls around, faced with Louisa, her hands cuffed behind her back. She’s smirking, just slightly, but she’s shaking. Her whole body, like Malcolm’s tremor, as her gaze darts to the room and then back to Gil.

He takes her arms and says, “Give me the code.”

With a snobby little expression of confidence betrayed by the emotion in her eyes, she replies, “I don’t know it.”

“You locked him in there!” It’s everything he can do not to shake it out of her, and then he hears something crash in the room and turns to find Malcolm pressed face first down against the floor, his fingers clawing at the carpet as he _suffocates._

“He’s dying,” he whispers, his heart pounding and _aching_. Malcolm tries to turn onto his back but only manages to get onto his side, his eyes rolling as his head lolls onto his arm and his mouth opens and closes, gasping for air that isn’t there.

It’s the most horrifying thing Gil’s ever seen, and it completely freezes him. He can’t breathe, either. He never wants to breathe _again_ if Malcolm—

Louisa _whimpers._ Suddenly Gil remembers everything Malcolm’s ever said about killers wanting to dissociate from the murder, not wanting to actually _see_ the death, killing them with drugs or fucking _trash compactors_ just so they didn’t have to face them as they died.

There wouldn’t be fear if she completely and entirely wanted this. But there’s _so much fear._ She’s shaking so hard she’s falling apart in his hands.

And he uses that. It’s all he can do, his last hope. He drags her over in front of the door, holds her there, and shouts, “Look at him! _Look at him!_ He’s dying!”

She tries to look away, and he moves her so she can’t. Malcolm’s eyes are up on them but unfocused, foggy.

And then he gives one last weakened heave for air, and they flutter shut. 

He goes still, completely.

Not—not dead, not—please, God, _not dead—_

“You're killing him,” he hisses, shaking her again as tears fall down her face, down _his_ face. “You’ve got one murder, do you want two more? You can make a deal! We can make you a deal—but not if you don’t _give me the code!_ I’ll make sure you’re put away for _life_ if you take his!”

She takes a shuddering breath. She stares down at Malcolm’s pale face, his blue lips, his _dying body._

And then she whispers four numbers that Gil nearly misses, that he nearly doesn’t hear at all past the ringing in his ears, the pounding of his heart.

But he gets them. He pushes her back into the arms of another officer, puts them into the damned keypad—

And the door hisses, slides open, and allows air into the room.

Malcolm doesn’t take any in, though. He stays quiet, unmoving, _unbreathing,_ and Gil hears so much going on around him all at once but _none_ of it matters as he drops to his knees beside him.

“ _Malcolm,_ ” he pleads, and it comes out choked, a sob more than a word. He places his hands on Malcolm’s chest, compressing, and then tilts his head back, pinches his nose and gives him a breath. 

_Please, Christ, please—_

Malcolm’s eyes fly open. He coughs out the air Gil forced into him and gasps in more, sputtering and wheezing.

Gil feels more tears streaming down as he laughs softly, so damn relieved he doesn’t know what to _do_ with himself. He cups Malcolm’s face, rubbing his thumbs over his boy’s cheeks as they start to regain color, as Malcolm keeps blinking and keeps _breathing,_ though he looks entirely confused and afraid and a bit like he doesn’t recognize it’s Gil above him at all. 

“Hey,” Gil soothes, “it’s okay. It’s okay, kid. You’re okay.”

Malcolm coughs again, and shakes his head like he’s _disagreeing,_ and Gil picks him up with an arm under his knees and behind his back, pulling him close. Two medics rush past him into the room with Delaney, and another fits an oxygen mask over Malcolm’s mouth, something he tries to push away in a panic.

“You’re okay, you’re okay! Relax. You’re just fine.”

Malcolm sucks in a few quick breaths and sighs in what Gil hopes is relief of some of the pain he must be in. His head lolls onto Gil’s shoulder, his hand trembling as it fists in Gil’s sweater, and the mask fogs up as he tries to speak but Gil can barely make anything out.

“I—is’e—is—he—”

“I’ve got a pulse!” one of the medics shouts from inside the room beside Delaney, and Malcolm strains to raise his head, looking about, wriggling in Gil’s arms to try and get a better look. And once he gets one, he apparently decides it’s a perfectly alright time to _faint,_ when the quiet groan and then _dead silence,_ the deadweight drop of his body back against Gil’s chest, scares the _shit_ out of Gil. _Again._

He’s too fucking old for this. Malcolm is going to _kill him._

He’s conscious again by the time Gil's carried him out to lay in the ambulance; more than enough to be pushing medics away from him even as Gil tries to insist otherwise.

“‘m fine,” Malcolm rasps out, sounding exactly as hoarse and weak as one would expect after such an ordeal—and Gil can’t expect _anything_ with the little shit. He needs a damn _pacemaker._

“No,” Malcolm is speaking again, yanking away from their touches, though he’s thankfully, at least, allowing the oxygen mask to stay in place. “‘m just fine! Le’ go! No ‘ospital!”

Gil grabs his hand, and Malcolm flinches and tries to shake him off until he realizes it’s not another medic trying to put an IV in him. He relaxes a bit, then, and gives Gil such a _soft_ little smile that pisses him off even more because he almost, _almost_ never got to see it again.

“You’re _fine?_ I just—I just saw you—”

Malcolm stops. He frowns, like maybe he hadn’t _thought_ of that before, like he hadn’t thought that seeing that is going to haunt Gil probably _forever_ , and certainly prevent any sort of sleep for a long while. 

“‘m okay,” he says, “‘m...always okay.”

Gil grits his teeth. Malcolm bites his lip, flushing, and to see his face any color beside that awful, deathly pale blue makes it hard to be mad. He’s still trembling, and so is Gil, but he’s not dead. He’s not dead. He _is_ okay.

“I thought you wouldn’t be,” Gil says quietly, swallowing hard. Malcolm squirms in discomfort, taking the deepest breath he can like he’s reminding himself he has the ability again, and mumbles something that sounds like an agreement. 

It’s not exactly comforting. 

The medic behind him wraps a blanket around Malcolm’s shoulders, and while he still jumps and recoils he allows it, tugs it from their hands and pulls it tight around himself. Gil sighs, reaching out to hold the back of Malcolm’s neck, and Malcolm’s eyes flutter shut again, _far_ less frightening than the last time.

“We are _not_ done talking,” he says, but then he’s bringing Malcolm into a tight hug, and Malcolm is sighing into his neck, _breathing,_ stupid but alive, an idiot but _his_ idiot, and Gil figures that for right now, for a few minutes, until he can regain his bearings and thoughts and try to put together any sort of reprimand, nothing else but that matters.

And really, he knows that nothing else but that _ever_ matters. 


End file.
